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What is the difference between arts and culture?

Sandy Fitzgerald

From doing a lot
of work I mean I have worked for the sector now for over 40
years. And also I travelled a lot with my own work
throughout Europe. And one of the big problems I come up against
all the time is the confusion between art and culture and the
definition of art and culture. And this cuts across everything.

If people do not
understand the difference between the art and culture what separates
them then you are always beginning from the wrong place. I think
a lot of people confuse the two when they talk about art
and culture, culture and art it is the same thing for them. But in
fact culture is really about developing society and it is about the
quality of life, it is about every aspect of human behaviour. Culture
is really the space that we create within the environment as human
beings and that is the difference between us and nature. Nature
actually develops in its own freedom. We are part of nature then as
a sub-section we are creating this culture, this cultural
development. That is totally human made.

Cities of Culture in
Europe for instance I think there is a big misunderstanding
in a lot of those projects because they are all about investing
in art. But that does not necessarily mean we are investing in the
culture of the city. So for many years in many
different situations I have discussed these questions with lots
of other people. People have had debates. There have been ongoing
debates for forty years much more about what culture is.
A good few years ago
in the nineties in Dublin there was a research project done by
Trinity College and it was about different capitals in Europe and how
young people behaved. And it was measured on things like anti-social
behaviour, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, all of these things. And in
Ireland we were very surprised to find that actually Dublin was down
at the bottom of this survey and Amsterdam was at a top. So the
young people in Amsterdam really were very engaged with their culture
and saw that there is a lot for them regard to their future.
And it suddenly clicked
with me that actually the very simple definition of culture is the
culture is about having a future. And if you can see your future
and if you have a place to go in the future then your life
becomes meaningful and then you have something to participate in and
you have something to invest in.
If you see no future then
why would you participate. And also not only that, you probably react
negatively. And lots of young people in all the cities in Europe are
in the situation where they cannot see a future for themselves.
So they are reacting in ways that are very damaging to themselves, to
their communities, to their cities, to their societies. And that is
why we should be investing in the culture.
Investing in art will not
solve that problem and will not change anything. So if you want to
change culture you have to invest in culture as is defined as our
behaviour as human beings. And of course art can actually make a big
difference in that. And art should be the leader in that but it
is not actually. And the reason is not that a lot of artists do
not understand this either, a lot of cultural organizations, art
organizations do not understand this question.
If you go to invest in art
then you have to really understand the difference between the art and
culture. And if you then decide to invest in art, that is fine. But
the problem I see all the time is that people do not know what
they are talking about. They have not defined what they mean by arts
and culture. And they therefore probably are investing in the wrong
thing.

Culture is really
everything that human beings create in our world, in our physical
space. And that is everything. I mean everything, language,
agriculture food, buildings, everything. Every single thing that we
create is a culture.
Art is one of the
aspects of culture. It is a very defined creative approach to
making objects or making concepts. It is defined as a physical
thing that we create be it a painting or a movie or
whatever. So it is almost like creating. It is a craft or a
skill by which we create an object. And that object can be conceptual
as well as physical. But is very definite. It is very defined
activity and it is a very defined product that you have in art.
Whereas the culture is everything, what we are surrounded by.